Five impressions: Gonzaga’s time at the Players Era Festival came with highs, lows and everything in between

LAS VEGAS – Two months ago, without knowing anything other than how the win-loss record would shake out, the overwhelming majority of fans would have been satisfied with what Gonzaga put together this week at the Players Era Festival.

Satisfaction probably turns to elation when you factor in that the 12th-ranked Zags not only went 2-1 at an event featuring eight teams ranked in the Associated Press Top 25, but picked up a top-10 win and qualified for the championship game – guaranteeing, at minimum, a $500,000 payout to the program’s NIL pot.

Gonzaga fans might be better off focusing on those things rather than how the final 40 minutes played out on the court Wednesday at MGM Grand Garden Arena. Two or three plates of Thanksgiving-day fare might not be enough to wash out the taste of a 101-61 thumping from Michigan in the title game.

In lieu of the traditional day-after rewind, where we would focus on a single game, we decided to recap what happened over three days at the Players Era Festival, reviewing Monday’s 95-85 win over No. 8 Alabama, Tuesday’s 100-61 rout of Maryland and, yes, Wednesday’s 40-point drubbing courtesy of the maize and blue.

Below are some takeaways and impressions from Gonzaga’s first – and likely not last – appearance at the second-annual Players Era tournament.

Hit or miss

Trying to predict if the Zags will be awesome or atrocious from the 3-point line on a given night could be more difficult than hitting on a nine-game parlay at one of Vegas’ iconic sportsbooks.

GU has been all over the map this season, and this week’s tournament was a microcosm of what the team has experienced through eight games.

If you only looked at box scores from the first and final games at the Players Era Festival, it would not breed much confidence in Gonzaga’s ability to become a consistent outside shooting team. The Zags finished 6 of 22 (27.3%) against Alabama and would have gladly taken that percentage in Wednesday’s title game, when they made just 3 of 22 (13.6%) from behind the arc.

Gonzaga would have left Vegas shooting well under 30% from the 3-point line if not for Tuesday’s outlier performance against Maryland. The Zags made 14 of 33 (42.4%) against the Terrapins in a game where seven of the team’s 10 primary rotation players contributed with at least one triple and two – Emmanuel Innocenti and Steele Venters – combined to make nine.

Good luck trying to reach any conclusions on where the Zags will finish this season as it pertains to 3-point shooting percentage. In four games, they have shot below 28%. In two others, they have made 42% or better. For the season, they are hitting at a 32% clip.

On Wednesday, Michigan’s defense dictated Gonzaga’s shot quality and selection. When the ball is hopping around and closeouts are not coming as quick or aggressively, the Zags are more than capable of hitting shots at a high clip. Look no further than Tuesday’s barrage against Maryland and last week’s showing against Southern Utah, when Gonzaga made 8 of 14 shots from deep.

The final verdict? Given Gonzaga’s track record under Few, we are willing to wager the Zags will not finish the year shooting below 30% but anything above 40% also seems like a significant stretch. In 2024-25, a wildly inconsistent GU team closed the season shooting 34.4% from the 3-point line. For now, that could be a good mark to aim for.

Verdict on PG1?

When Gonzaga inserted Mario Saint-Supery into the starting lineup against Southern Utah, the team’s final chance to make tweaks before the level of competition escalated in Vegas, it felt like an opportunity for the freshman to seize control of the point guard job for good, or at least the immediate future.

Saint-Supery aced his audition and continued to hold down the starting role at Players Era, replacing redshirt junior Braeden Smith, who’d been GU’s starting point guard in the first four games.

Outside of some spotty shooting from inside and outside the 3-point arc, the 19-year-old Saint-Supery continued to shine on the Vegas stage, averaging 6.6 points, 7.0 assists and 3.6 rebounds while committing just six turnovers over 78 minutes.

His playing time at the event reflects how Few and his staff view the point guard position as things stand currently. Saint-Supery registered a season-high 32 minutes against Alabama, following that with 22 against Maryland and 24 against Michigan. Smith, meanwhile, averaged 13.6 minutes over three games and logged only eight against Alabama, committing four turnovers over 41 minutes.

Saint-Supery’s zero field goals made against Alabama come with a caveat. The guard only two took shots but still managed to score 10 points, all from the free throw line as the Zags captured their first top-10 win. Saint-Supery’s size, aggression and ball-handling give him the ability to create foul pressure in ways Smith cannot, and the Spanish native is averaging 3.3 free throw attempts per game, second on the team behind Graham Ike.

“He plays with great spirit, and it’s contagious,” Gonzaga coach Mark Few said. “And he’s far from perfect, but that spirit and his toughness and his size – and again, he can really shoot the ball and I think that’s going to be really important for us. I think we’re still ironing out some things with the crazy jump passes and such, but like I said, those are the room for growth areas.

“He brings that spirit, he sees things and anybody that steps up and goes 10 for 11 at the line, that was big.”

Granted, Smith’s role on the team is still vital. The Seattle native’s 5 points, five assists and five steals against Maryland should not go overlooked, nor should the significance of having two lead guards who can confidently run the team at any point in time. Ryan Nembhard averaged 35.1 minutes last season and logged at least 40 minutes in 10 different games, including three overtime decisions contests where he eclipsed 40.

After losing eight games that were decided by one or two possessions in 2024-25, having a fresh point guard on the floor will not hurt if the Zags eventually find themselves in more end-of-game scenarios this season.

Recalibrating expectations

Before arriving in Vegas, Gonzaga touted one of the top four defenses in the sport, according to traditional statistics and more detailed metrics like KenPom’s adjusted defensive efficiency rating.

Were the Zags as good as they demonstrated through the first seven games? Were they elite defensively, or a group that merely had not faced Top 25-caliber opponents like Alabama and Michigan capable of hanging 90-100 points almost without blinking?

As is usually the case, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

The Zags allowed 85 points to Alabama in Monday’s opener, making some key coverage changes late in the second half to limit the damage inflicted by slippery guard Labaron Philon Jr., who had 29 points but didn’t score inside the final 9 minutes, 51 seconds.

Alabama’s 85 points were 20 more than Gonzaga had allowed in any game up to that point. By itself, that point total probably does not look good on paper, and the Zags walked away feeling they could have done things to corral Philon Jr. before he got comfortable.

But consider this, too: outside of their two losses, the Tide are averaging 100.8 points this season. Alabama followed the Gonzaga loss with a 115-76 win over UNLV and 105-72 rout of Maryland.

By late March, Alabama’s 85-point showing on Monday could signify one of its lowest outputs of the year.

“The best thing we did is, especially for a group where we’re throwing a lot of stuff at them and seem to suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder when we throw stuff at them, was we switched defenses three different times,” Few said. “We switched our coverages and they hit their coverages every single time. Every single time.”

The Zags were good enough defensively against Alabama and superb in Tuesday’s win against a Maryland team that coughed up the ball 18 times and shot 36% from the field.

On Wednesday, they ran into a formidable Michigan offense that possesses size, mobility and physicality down low, but also numerous weapons on the perimeter capable of shooting at a high clip. The Wolverines impressively drained 38 3-pointers during their stay in Vegas, making 13 of 27 (48%) against Gonzaga.

Michigan’s 101-point outing was a hit to Gonzaga’s defensive rating, but the Zags still rank No. 17 nationally in scoring defense (62.1 ppg) and KenPom and BartTorvik still consider them a top-10 defense in the country.

“They’re a good team, obviously, but this was as much on us as it was Michigan,” Gonzaga’s Braden Huff said. “We know we’ve got to be better, we’ve got to be more physical, we’ve got to compete better.”

Model of consistency

After only 10 minutes of Wednesday’s championship game, the odds of any Gonzaga player earning Players Era MVP honors dwindled from 50% to about 5%. The event does not name an all-tournament team, either – perhaps an idea for organizers to spice things up in the future – so the Zags were not recognized in any capacity before leaving the arena.

However, media members were asked to submit MVP candidates for both teams by the under-4 media timeout of the second half, in the event Wednesday’s championship went down to the wire.

For transparency’s sake, primarily because of deadline rush we did not get around to submitting MVP votes for either team Wednesday. In hindsight Yaxel Lendeborg, the eventual MVP, would’ve been the correct pick for Michigan.

As for Gonzaga? Retroactively, we would’ve given our vote to Braden Huff, who was consistent across all three games and one of just two Zags to finish in double figures on Wednesday against the Wolverines’ daunting defense.

Huff opened with 18 points and one of his better rebounding games of the year against Alabama, hauling down eight rebounds. The junior followed with 20 points against Maryland, converting with vintage Huff efficiency against the Tide and Terps making 18 of 22 (81.8%) from the field.

Michigan’s defense swallowed eight of Gonzaga’s shots on Wednesday, including two of Huff’s, but the junior still had success in a game where frontcourt mate Ike was held to a single point on zero field goals. Huff missed all three of his 3-point looks, but the Illinois native was able to get to his 5-foot push shot with some level of consistency and routinely dropped that in over the outstretched arms of 7-foot-3 Aday Mara.

Huff finished with 14 points on 7 of 17 shooting before fouling out in the second half. For the tournament, he averaged 17.3 ppg and 5.6 rpg while shooting 64% from the field.

Point(s) taken

With five teams improving to 2-0 on Tuesday, Players Era’s heavily scrutinized tiebreaker formula came into play to determine the teams playing in Wednesday’s championship.

Gonzaga, Michigan, Kansas, Tennessee and Iowa State were all perfect, forcing the tournament to rely on point margin (capped at 20 per game) to select its finalists. Maxing out its point differential with 40- and 30-point wins over San Diego State and Auburn, Michigan easily grabbed one championship berth. Playing later on Tuesday, Gonzaga needed to beat Maryland by at least 14 points to edge the other three unbeaten teams.

Few was asked for his thoughts on the format, which resembles the tiebreaker criteria used at various levels of basketball, including AAU and different international competitions.

“It’s actually FIBA. That’s how the Olympics are played, that’s how the World Cup’s played and I’ve got some good experience with that,” Few said. “So yeah, I think it’s a good things. These guys are old enough and mature enough to handle it. I don’t think you always need to sub everybody and feel bad about scoring at the end of games. I mean, I never do when somebody puts it on us.”

Some changes to the format will be inevitable when the field expands to 32 teams next season.

“The format can be tweaked,” Kansas coach Bill Self said. “You can still go by point differential, but you can’t penalize teams for going 2-0. Everybody should get a piece of (the money), in my opinion.”